By Bill Young
February 14, 2009 11:05 pm
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Mentally draw a straight line from Cayuga in Anderson County westward to Winkler and Streetman in Freestone County. Think of this as being the lower end of what we refer to as the upper Trinity Basin. Then think about all of the residents living north of this line all of the way up to Denton. This would include Waxahachie, Ennis, Corsicana, all of the towns located along the Interstate 45 corridor and the entire DFW Metroplex. The total number of people living within this region would be well over four million. All of those residents call this region their permanent home and their day-to-day lives are conducted daily within this same area.
Archeologically speaking for this same region, the number of Native Americans living in this upper Trinity River basin on a permanent basis equals zero, as far as we have been able to prove or disprove. If we start with what we now refer to as the Late Prehistoric time period, which used to be referred to as the Neo-American time period, there isn’t a single site indicating a historical Native American village. West, east and below the line mentioned above are several sites associated with historical Native Americans. Then going farther back into time to what we think of as the Archaic time periods which we have divided into three phases. Early, Middle and Late, one culture has been identified dating to the Middle period and has archeologically been tied to the upper Trinity Basin. This single culture is known as the Carrollton Focus.
During all three Archaic time periods, permanent settlements had not been conceived of or started, instead all of the various groups were constantly on the move from place to place, hunting and gathering all types of food, both animal and vegetable. In other words whatever was easily accessible. Once they had removed these items, they moved on into a new area and repeated the process. How far they moved each time is open to debate. Some years the move may have covered only a few miles while in other years, especially years of drought, the move may have covered many miles. For instance, during the survey for archeological sites on the Richland/Chambers Reservoir, the archeologists found sites only a few hundred yards apart in some areas which contained basically the same style projectile points and tools. Does this mean a group moved only a few hundred yards? We think not. There could be several explanations for this happening. A second group who happened to use the same weapon tips and tools came through at a different time period and elected to briefly occupy the second site or the first group came back through there several months or possibly years later and decided the second site was more to their liking rather then the previously occupied site. Then if we throw in the fact a certain style point was made for several thousand years, we should be thinking about many generations of descendants who kept coming back to this region occupying site after site. Nothing in archeology is simple!
Sometimes I feel almost ashamed because we identify Native American cultures by the stone projectile points they produced. We basically have to do this since stone weapons and tools are the number one artifacts we find remaining on a site. Once in a while bone and shell remains are discovered which hint to the diets of some of these groups. But nothing of significance usually remains which will tell us what these people did on a daily basis. Semi-permanent houses don’t show up until fairly late in the Archaic sequence so we don’t even begin to understand what type of structures the Early and Middle Archaic people lived in. Since they were constantly on the prowl, they may have opted not to construct any type of serious protection from the elements.
However, I cannot help but think they had to build something, probably out of limbs and brush over which they could throw animal hides in an effort to provide protection from storms and the cold. Having been caught several times way back in some area during a thunderstorm, I have to think some form of temporary housing was constructed at many of the sites. I distinctly remember one time being caught out in a sand pit when a vicious thunderstorm came up rapidly. There was a rubber tire front end loader sitting at the edge of the pit and I was able to climb in the cab for protection. Immediately after closing the door, a bolt of lightening struck a big aluminum power line tower located about a hundred yards away from me. The upper part of the tower turned snow white for a few brief seconds and if I had had a mirror available I’m sure my color went white. Another time I was way out in a muddy plowed field in Hill County when the same thing happened. This time I started running across the field to get into a small shed on the side of a hill. My boots and my socks still remain somewhere in the field because they came off during my flight and I wasn’t about to stop and attempt to pull them out of the mud. Memories!
If you will look at today’s illustration, this is a Carrollton point. Back in the early 1940s, two men from Dallas, Wilson Crook and R.K. Harris, named this point and defined the Carrollton Focus. A list of traits was compiled but many of the artifacts listed in the trait list are not considered viable today. For instance they listed Waco sinkers as part of the Carrollton Focus. Waco sinkers have been firmly dated to slightly over 9,000 years old and the Carrollton Focus dates to around four to five thousand years ago. The two men based their findings on several terrace sites located along both sides of the Trinity River. However, the soil horizons were mixed and not uniformly distributed. This has been a large problem in recent years trying to correctly separate the cultures discovered during excavations of these terrace locations. Clearing of the land, plowing, burrowing animals such as armadillos and gophers and bioturbation can seriously mix a site. Bioturbation is the term used to describe certain soils which rotate around through time. If you were to cut a trench into a bioturbated soil, you could easily see the spiral configurations moving through the soil carrying artifacts from top to bottom and vise versa. Archeologically speaking, excavating into this situation will make you pull your hair!
Next week: More about the Carrollton Focus compared to a central Texas type.
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Photos
Courtesy photo
The Carrollton point.